AI and Criminal Cases: Forney Lawyer Explains How LLMs Are Changing Defense Work in 2026

FORNEY, Texas — In an era where most criminal cases can generate gigabytes of digital data, the Forney law firm Guest and Gray is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to level the playing field.

The image of a criminal defense lawyer buried under cardboard boxes filled with dusty police reports is fast becoming obsolete. Today, the battlefield is digital. A modern DWI or assault case in Kaufman County involves not just a police report, but hours of body-camera footage, Ring doorbell videos, gigabytes of cell phone downloads, and complex GPS data. For the defense, the challenge is no longer just finding the evidence; it is processing it before the trial begins.

Robert Guest, a partner at Guest and Gray Law Firm in Forney and a former prosecutor, believes the legal profession is undergoing its biggest shift in decades. His firm has aggressively adopted cutting-edge AI tools, including platforms powered by Google Gemini and Westlaw AI, to handle the data deluge in criminal defense cases.

In an exclusive interview, InForney sat down with Robert Guest to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing the way they defend clients in Kaufman County courts, moving from brute-force reading to strategic, AI-assisted analysis.

How AI Transforms Criminal Defense

InForney: "AI lawyer" sounds like science fiction. What does using AI in a criminal case actually look like on a day-to-day basis at Guest & Gray?

Robert Guest: It is crucial to understand that AI does not replace the lawyer. What AI does is act as an incredibly fast, tireless junior associate that never sleeps.

When the State provides us with discovery, which is the evidence they have gathered about the case, it can be a massive digital file. We might get 10 hours of video and 500 pages of documents for a single felony case. Medical records, texts, cell phone dumps, and body cam videos are the norm now in most cases. When I started practicing law, most cases had no video, or maybe one VHS cassette from the patrol car. Now, the norm is multiple body cams, cell phone videos, doorbell videos, and copies of cell phones or computers. Text messages and social media DMs are also frequently found in discovery and need to be vetted.

We use advanced Large Language Models, like those integrated with Google Gemini’s architecture, to assist in the organization of large case files. We can feed secure, redacted transcripts of body-cam footage into the model and ask it to pinpoint every instance an officer mentions a specific phrase, like "I don't smell alcohol." It can also flag inconsistent statements made by a witness across different documents and in different formats. It turns weeks of review into hours. Google Notebook is especially useful for secure, organized case logs. Google does not train on our data, and we verify that our software partners are secure for client data.

The Evolution of Legal Research

InForney: You mentioned Google Gemini for data, but what about actual legal research? Are you still pulling law books off the shelf?

Robert Guest: When I was in law school, we had to learn to research with books from the law library. The next semester, we could use access to our online research accounts (Lexis and Westlaw). It’s been an arms race for technological superiority ever since. For legal research, we rely on specialized tools like Westlaw Precision with AI. This is a critical distinction from general-purpose AI. Consumer-level AI suffers from 'hallucination' issues, where the AI often wants you to be happy more than it wants to be accurate. Lawyers are constantly getting embarrassed citing non-existent case law in briefs and pleadings.

Westlaw has indexed virtually every legal case in American history. Their new AI tools allow us to ask very complex, natural language questions related to Texas-specific law. For example, I can ask Westlaw AI to summarize recent Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rulings regarding the admissibility of warrantless blood draws in fatal DWI accidents where exigent circumstances were argued.

Instead of just giving me a list of links, the AI reads the relevant cases and writes a memo summarizing the current state of the law. It cites the exact precedents I need to use in a Kaufman County courtroom. It ensures our legal arguments are based on the absolute latest rulings. This gives our clients a significant strategic advantage.

Key Takeaway for Defendants

InForney: What is the main takeaway for someone in Forney facing criminal charges right now?

Robert Guest: The takeaway is that the government has unlimited resources and high-tech tools to build their case against you. If your defense team is not using similar technology to fight back, you are bringing a knife to a gunfight. Ask about the tech stack and workflows when trying to find the right lawyer for your case. If a lawyer is still practicing law like it is 2006, then go somewhere else.

At Guest & Gray, we believe leveraging AI for discovery review, timeline construction, and research is the indispensable foundation of a modern, aggressive criminal defense in Texas.